


How Sweet the Sound

by Rydain



Series: As the Chips Fall [5]
Category: The Sexy Brutale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, Eventual Sex, F/F, Feel-good, Femslash, Friendship, No Spoilers, Personal Growth, Romance, Voodoo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:42:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26272051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rydain/pseuds/Rydain
Summary: A transatlantic romantic reunion in springtime New Orleans.
Relationships: Tequila Belle/Willow Blue
Series: As the Chips Fall [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/825456
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	How Sweet the Sound

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to Tequila and Willow's fond farewell of Weep No More, My Lady - recommended reading, but by no means expected.
> 
> Rating will change with the fulfillment of a particular tagged promise.

The calligraphed announcement came to Willow just the same as all the rest, accompaniments to letters meandering in ever more detail as autumn's chill passed into winter and the first green of spring. A card for Tequila's services as a personal stylist, engraved with the sleek vintage flair of the cocktail dresses she wore with the ease of a flannel nightgown. Snapshots of a gaily explored London, strolls through the vibrance of Shoreditch and sneak peeks behind the curtain of her musical debut. A signed playbill from that show of wasting a small fortune to win an unthinkable inheritance, a fitting sort of irony for a singer who had launched this new life of hers from the stage of a casino in questionable straits of its own.

Who would be back across the Atlantic sooner than they had imagined, or dared to hope might be possible. Back to New Orleans for an exclusive engagement, an appearance before an audience of one. A date of Willow's choice within a comfortable length of stay, maybe closer to now than later. Maybe even that weekend, as Tequila teased a thought of flying out on when Willow called her up with a schedule wide open and willing, and repeatedly enough over a good long hour that Willow began to think she just might.

Indeed Tequila did, as per the midnight call from a taxi en route to Rue Dauphine. Not a bother in the slightest, as Willow assured Tequila when she couldn't help but fret about disturbing her, as if she were some other sort of presence apt to drop in at this hour. Some haunting a world apart from memories of her lithe hands and lily perfume, her warm print of lipstick left to linger after their farewell embrace, her platinum updo so proud as she boarded her train with a suitcase in each hand and a long look back before moving on for this meantime.

Which might as well have been yesterday as Tequila emerged from her ride with that same cream leather in tow and eyes as bright as they were weary. Eyes welling over with tears as they drew close and held tight, and their slow kiss of greeting redoubled the warmth of that autumn goodbye.

* * *

Tequila sang a tune for the glint of sun through gingham curtains as she bustled about a kitchen already just about familiar enough for comfort. A polka dot apron from the drawer with the dishcloths, an iron skillet on a low burner of the porcelain range passed down from the same quaint era as the refrigerator Willow had named as the icebox. Butter and eggs, strawberries and cucumber, fresh sprigs of mint from the lush potted garden Willow kept in her corner of the back courtyard. Blue floral plates from a cabinet with workspace for knife and cutting board, a serving bowl shelved out in the open among jars of coffee and tea, sugar and spice, red beans and rice and cornmeal. Which Willow had put on for their first shared New Orleans breakfast, grits topped with wilted greens and an egg likewise cooked up just so.

Just as Tequila thought to do when she finished chopping fruit salad and cracked a pair in to sizzle, except the whites crisped up when she thought to get a head start on cleaning. Then stuck to the pan as she went to flip them, straight from sunny side up to some halfway sort of scramble, something too soft and too solid but still made into some state of functional. Still one grade A heck of a mess, as Tequila sighed at the skillet after making their plates. As Willow padded in with a yawn stifled into a bemused smile, black braid loosed from its sleeping cap and well below the waist of her calico housecoat.

"You do know you can wake me, yes?"

"That was the idea. The breakfast alarm. Hope it doesn't smell too much like burning." Tequila shrugged with the spatula. "Or taste like it, for that matter."

"It's fine. It's good. It's an invention." Willow took her plate and a test bite with equal shares of faith in Tequila's cooking and her own near clairvoyant sense of observation put to work on those who came to seek her spiritual guidance. "Kentucky fried scramble, yes?"

Tequila laughed. A taste of home indeed, given her teenage attempts with the hot plate in Ma's trailer. "I can't believe it's not rubber."

"I can't believe you're up already. Up to all of this, even. I thought you'd still be shaking off the jet lag."

"Can I blame that for these eggs?"

"You can sit down and relax. Stop fussing and start eating. I'll be in charge of the coffee." Willow set the food on her kitchen table for two. "Cream and sugar, yes?"

Tequila took two bites to start with and saved the rest for company a hop across checkered tile and still close enough for warmth, unrushed as she was when drawing cards or throwing bones or welcoming a spectral guest to speak through her by candlelight. Willow put on a kettle and prepared the French press, scraped out the skillet over protests that Tequila ought to be the one cleaning up a hot mess that was indeed better than serviceable. That she was just making herself at home as Willow had insisted, doing her part rather than working altogether too hard on vacation. That it was a break for Willow, too, as much as Tequila could make it one within the rhythms of her everyday life.

"I thought I'd try it your way this time." Willow served up two mugs of dark roast lightly doctored, sweeping her braid tassel out from being sat on. "Just a touch of sweet for the bitter, yes?"

"Done up without overdoing it, at least to my tastes. You might want to add a pinch or two for yours." Tequila had a long whiff of her steaming brew, a shudder at the strength of its bite. "Or more."

"It's functional. It's good." Willow cradled her cup as she drank, a caress of brown fingers on fine porcelain. "All the better to be waking up like this."

"And to be like this. Here with you. It sure is some kind of relief."

"It is, yes, to see you looking so well. Doing so well. You know how I can't help but worry."

"Even with all my show and tell. It's just part and parcel, isn't it?" Tequila smiled just as she did at those double stamped replies to her promotions and photographs, the equally free flow of speculation and inquiry. Guesses at details gone on to ask about, and already a good ways sorted in Willow's reckoning. "You can only see so far across an ocean."

Or read so much into correspondence, thorough as theirs had grown to be. Tequila had let on certain struggles of working her contacts and shopping for clients, preparing for auditions that never panned out. The rest was for her to deal with and not for Willow to needlessly fret over, not as she was showing her weariness with seekers too stuck in their worst instincts. Too stubborn for their own good, as Tequila was when they first chanced to meet, when Willow helped her find the spine to pack up from a manor that had long since lost its promise made by the man who enticed her there. Tequila wondered if she should say more herself or press Willow toward the same, a fair trade of gentle inquiry. Their first day had been as much in leisurely ramblings of catchup, stories shared and concerns relieved in the moment rather than left to hang between the lines of longhand.

"Thank Agwe for clearing those waters. For seeing you back here so soon." Willow took a slow taste of fruit salad, savoring its crisp mix of sweet and tart that had apparently balanced out as hoped for. "It's been quite a homecoming, yes?"

"You can say that, except I can't say I lived like this when I was here. This sure is a ways from my walkup."

"Your first walk on my side of town?"

"Pretty much. I'd been to the Quarter, Bourbon Street and all that. Splashed out for a five course on a balcony. Which was worth it, by the way, even just to be so fancy on a night I wasn't singing for my supper."

"And to catch that kind of view in the bargain."

"Indeed." Tequila felt a flush rising at the glint in Willow's gaze, the skim over the close curves of her sleeveless blouse. "But I don't reckon I actually saw it. At least not like you do."

"Being here, but not being here." Willow nodded. "A tourist in your own city, yes?"

"If it was mine in the first place. I didn't even unpack - not entirely - let alone get into all the rest." A rueful shrug. "I'd been so long on the road, I guess I forgot how to settle."

"Which was just how it was, maybe how it had to be. No sense digging in if you might already be on your way out."

"Or if you have no real sense of what you're in for. I sure learned that one the hard way. But that's enough of that." Tequila popped her last forkful of scramble down the hatch as if to swallow such thoughts for good. "It got me here, and here I am. All set for a proper introduction."

Willow looked past Tequila as she worked through her last bites of breakfast, as if to the rows of canning jars shelved behind her. An arcane pantry of dried herbs and roots and petals, bones and nails and crystals and coins, artifacts sorted and sanctified in wait of their place on her altar.

"Then it's time to meet more of the family, yes?"

"In body or in spirit?"

Willow smiled. "How about the best of both worlds?"

* * *

They stopped for beignets on Willow's insistence, though Tequila only gave a brief tease of objection to the indulgence of dessert for lunch. Then a good long poke around the music store passed en route, a brick warehouse painted up with the vivid charm of its Frenchmen Street neighbors. Tequila had no artist or album in mind, no particular place to start looking. Just her usual eye out for something special, some gift or souvenir for her to surely know when she saw it.

Willow reappeared with a handbasket of records as Tequila was leafing through a songbook of a pianist too stylish to resist. Both in person and performance, with his thick afro and star sequined eye patch, his fast and full handed arrangements she could maybe start to hear the barest sketch of. "James Booker, yes? I don't even have to guess who that's for."

"Who else? The solo keyboard symphony. The man who plays Liszt for fun." Tequila started to puzzle through a blazing sequence of chords, halfway tempted to look it all up before she had a chance to hear it more personally. "I reckon he'll want to try this on for size."

"Redd's been making noise about the blues?"

"And a lot more than that, too." Tequila almost had to laugh at this deadpan echo of his wordplay and her own reflex of following suit. "He just can't stand to be one note, as he'd put in those same exact terms."

"It will be good to hear how he finds this. You, too, of course, if you're apt to sing along."

"I'll dial you in when we get on the line for that. Or save it for later, either way."

Willow smiled at the thought of a preview made to work so well over distance. "Or save it all for the big show if you're thinking to keep it gift wrapped."

"I don't know what I'm thinking. For that, that is." Tequila's mouth set like the mask Lucas had gifted her for his grandest of balls, the guise shed onstage when she sang a knife into his double dealing heart. The part she would play once again if she saw fit to accept the invite, if his promise of such was more than yet another to be broken. "It seems like too soon and forever, if you catch what I'm trying to say."

"Too far ahead for that planning itch, but maybe not far enough, no? Especially under the circumstances."

"I mean, I want to perform. For my friends. For my pride. For everyone who's there to hear me." Tequila stashed the songbook for checkout along with the albums she had parked nearby. "But not for him. Not that damn tooting fool. Not like I'm taking his pity."

"Not like you'd need it to begin with, no? Not with how you were in the papers." Willow spoke as if she had also read those reviews countless times over, filing away the quotes that still jumped off the page. "Sweetly sophisticated. Perky yet poignant, bringing fresh depth to light comedy. A supporting role strong enough to steal the show."

"I'm still wrapping my head around all of that."

"Like it all seems too good to be true, yes? You're a star. A headliner. A name up in lights." Willow linked her arm through Tequila's as they went to make their way to the register. "Just give it some time to sink in."

Or a spell, as Tequila pondered over their stroll back through the colorful streets of Marigny to a tidy Victorian storefront of cream and crimson and lavender. Honoré Botanica was closed for the hour but opened to Willow at her rhythmic tap on the gold lettered window. Miss Ophélie appeared in a jingle of door chimes and a sky blue ensemble, full skirt and fitted blouse crowned with a voluminous floral headwrap. She saw them in with hugs in turn and an exchange of greetings that Tequila figured as Creole as she took in an abundance of dried herbs and herbal teas, voodoo dolls and elaborate charmed necklaces, infused oils and incense and a rainbow of ritual candles.

"Well, well, well! It's Miss Lady Belle." Miss Ophélie struck a theatrical pose. "Or should I say Lilac Delaney?"

"Or Violet Duprée, or Clementine Grey, if you happen to go back that far." Tequila had snapped right back into her musical character, strutting like her flats had grown heels. "I've been through a few. Or a lot, some might say. It's a whole lot of math either way."

"That's quite the act you have there. Quite the accent as well." As did Miss Ophélie, soft around similar edges as Willow's and lilting with notes of the Caribbean. "Where from, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Kentucky by way of London, for the most part." Tequila put on her classic airs of formality, that preserved and rehearsed voice of phone operators and newsreels. "From both sides of the pond all at once, when the occasion might happen to call for it."

"You must know your audience. That's no easy feat, is it not?"

"It's something, that's for sure. Figuring out what they all want to hear, and sometimes more like what they need to. Though you two would be the experts on that last bit."

"That is what it takes. Folks come in here looking for something, even if they don't quite know what it is. Even if they're more so just curious." Miss Ophélie gave a shrugging sort of head tilt. "Or clueless, but sometimes you get what you get."

"Tourists?"

"Some, this far from Bourbon Street, but it's not just them looking for lucky numbers. Or some place to stick their pins and needles, for that matter."

"I can't say I know how it all works." Tequila turned to a display brought to mind by this line of thinking. "But I do know it's not that."

Tequila caught a smile at the edge of her gaze over dolls done up with buttons and feathers, sequins and embroidery, pastel stripes of rickrack like the trim of Miss Ophélie's wide cuffs and collar. She felt herself drawn in almost to touch, studying the detail of craftwork and notecard personality. Picturing a few in turn on her mantel with the prayer candle Willow had painted with a veve of Papa Legba, symbol of the crossroads he guarded and the compass to guide her on those opened paths.

Miss Ophélie laid a warm hand on Tequila's arm as if to invite a more personal look at her merchandise. "It looks like someone might want to go home with you."

"Well, I've been wanting a cat, but I live in a studio. Not much room to run around in, you know?" Tequila picked up a black felt plush with button eyes and ribbon collar, counterpart to Willow's neighborhood friend who sauntered into the courtyard for shared bits of sandwich turkey. "And I can always do with more luck. I would say who can't, really, but -"

"Whoever wouldn't know how to handle it." Willow shared a knowing look. "Easy come, easy go, yes?"

"As I was saying about numbers." Miss Ophélie nodded. "Not so fortunate, those, in the long run."

"Or less." Tequila arched a brow at a doll dressed in pink and white, guessed to be for love and actually for purposes of fertility. "Speaking of things too soon."

Or ever, as the amused curl of Willow's mouth seemed to say when Tequila turned to her as if to ask. "Let's stick with cats, yes?"

Another agreement made as they did, not so much discussed as so naturally discovered. Their grocery list and division of kitchen duty, Willow cleaning shrimp from their shells as Tequila stirred the roux from cream to copper. Their tea time with books from the parlor library, with brass bands on the phonograph and close games of rummy. Their fondness beyond friendship and the way they explored it, their first proper share of bed taken as slow as their letters. As if Willow might be just as new to this and what all it involved, what she might think to ask for with a pause of curious hand - what Tequila was starting to wish she would as she worked up her own nerve likewise.

"Ask away if you need to." Miss Ophélie spoke up while Tequila was poring over a pantheon of spirits so familiar to the voodoo faithful. "That is what I'm here for."

Tequila tried to think how to put it, or even how to sort what she was thinking. How some things could be shared but others were sacred, and taking of them would be some kind of stealing - especially by someone like her from the likes of present company. "Are any of these for me, too? Or just for me to look at?"

"They're for you, if you want. You've said it yourself." Willow gave a reminiscent nudge of smile. "It all goes upstairs just the same, yes?"

It had done so indeed in some close enough sense when they talked under the eyes of Baron Samedi, putting Tequila's failed love affair to rest along with the regrets wrapped up in its pursuit. The master of the dead was suitably dolled up in top hat and tailcoat and bone white makeup, monocled and grinning around a cigar Tequila was halfway tempted to sniff. Alongside him were Agwe of the oceans and Papa Legba with his guiding cane, Ogoun and Azaka and the wise serpent coils of Damballah. Then a face from the wall of Willow's parlor, a name she had brought up in blessing of their bond. A woman in red and blue and a spangled crown of gold, her cheek stitched with scars like the twin tracks of tears. Her legacy of fierce independence and tough country ways, of protecting women betrayed as Tequila had been before she found so much better.

"Erzulie Dantor. But of course." The name flowed from Miss Ophélie's tongue with a sweet and thrilling reverence. "I figured you two were about to find each other."

"I can relate, can't I? Born and raised where I was, and now with this right here, too." Tequila met Willow's eyes along with her hand, still flushing over the doll's frank description as a patron saint of women in love. "And some certain history before us."

"I've heard some tell. I'll leave it at that. That's not what I had in mind, anyway." 

"That's a relief."

"Don't be ashamed. It is what it is, or what it was. It's an old story anyhow." Miss Ophélie waved that thought away like the last smoke of a spent candle. "I've seen your cards. As a stylist, that is. That's some good business for you, isn't it?"

"It suits me, if you'll pardon the pun." Tequila preened a bit in her casually fitted blouse and slacks. "It's fun, you know? Finding fresh new looks - or vintage on consignment, but still. Something just right for the season or occasion. In the personal sense, too, beyond the cut and color and so on. I reckon that's most important."

"Speaking of knowing your audience."

"I think so. I hope so. So far, so good." A thoughtful shrug. "It's steadier than show business, at least."

"Better than working phones and waiting tables." Willow shot an encouraging look like a reminder to take some fair share of pride in achievement. "Or those errands you were running, yes?"

"They got me this gig, so there is that - credit where it's due and all. And it is my thing, or one of them. Creatively speaking, that is." Tequila found herself drawn back to the effigy of Erzulie Dantor, the calm strength captured in cotton and ribbons and careful embroidery. "It's all mine, in any case."

Miss Ophélie spoke with authority beyond her usual. "There is a lot to be said for that."

"Once again, you're the expert."

"It's taken its time. It's had its dry spells. Sometimes, it still does." Miss Ophélie glanced at the charms arrayed in a cabinet, beaded bags and artfully filled vials with a placard giving credit to Willow. "Don't think you're meant to weather those yourself."

"They wouldn't think to let me. My family, that is. Friends, technically, but close enough to count."

"It's all the same, isn't it? Blood and faith and community. Folks for you to rely on. To share and share alike, however that happens to shake."

"They've done me a few. This apartment I'm in, and some feathers for my nest egg, even if I can only thank them with a song. A set, more like, at their weddings and all, but let's not do the math on that, shall we?"

"Is someone back there expecting you to?"

"Someone up here. Same difference." Tequila patted her upswept hair. "Like one of these days, I should repay that in full. Like otherwise I'd be taking some charity."

"Like you were raised not to, I take it?"

Tequila laughed. "How do you know my Ma?"

"I know enough folks with all the wrong sorts of pride, and I have a good sense of where they got it. I also know you're one to learn better."

Tequila wondered what Miss Ophélie had heard about how she saw fit to take voodoo when Willow dared to run it past her, how much that might have said about the straight and narrow sorts of lily white naivete she had eventually come to rethink. "I try. I grew up with some ignorance, that's for sure. But I shouldn't be stuck holding onto it."

"You won't be, as long as you keep doing what you're doing. Putting that work in. Knowing there's always more to be done."

"Knowing how much I don't know. That's a lot." Tequila began to wander toward a bookcase skimmed over on her way into the shop. "Though I reckon that's enough of an idea."

"Enough to find yourself a place to start."

Tequila figured that a pick from these shelves was as good as any other, which only made it that much tougher to decide. Maybe a long hard look at slavery or Jim Crow, at how much there remained to fight for with its tail still so long in the present. Or something to ease herself into, unless that would be altogether too easy. Or maybe she was just overthinking it, and she took that as a yes when Miss Ophélie handed her a book of Carnival maskers done up in satin like the baby dolls they were named for, so cheeky in their frilled hems and flashed lace that Tequila had to sing a bit from her turn as the girl with a diamond garter to last her all her life.

"That is one of yours, isn't it?" Miss Ophélie smiled. "The stage presence says it all."

"It's Lilac's big show. Her debut in mine. 'The Garter Girl, the Garter Girl. The town belongs to me.'" Tequila broke out of the song she had fallen back into and the posture to go with it. "Oh, don't mind me."

"Who would?"

"I don't know. Maybe just my own self-consciousness. Sometimes that's a hard thing to shake." Tequila had her first look at the Baby Dolls who started it all, showing up the white women plying that pleasure trade under the same laws forbidding them likewise. "And this is such a brave thing right here. Going out like this in that time, that profession. Taking those streets for themselves."

"Taking their power as they could." Miss Ophélie edged in for a shared peek at a slow flip through photos just turning a leaf into color. "Much more than that, too, as it so happened. Change inspired as they did, by being as they were. Loud and clear and real."

"Just as they had every call to. It's good to see they still are." A gesture for Willow to come and see the most recent, a pink and green lineup with parasols raised in proud fists. "Always more work to do, right?"

Tequila read on as Miss Ophélie went off to convene with Willow about some private matter. It sure must be something to step out like this, carrying on with all that sass and class and gumption. Chomping cigars and throwing money, swinging their sticks made for more than just walking. Walking raddy, as they called it, as she got some idea from how the photos were starting to move in her mind. Something more to bring with her and eventually come back to see, set with her dolls on the counter when the beaded curtain behind it parted with a conversation shifting back into her language.

"I should let you get back to business, yes?" Willow offered. "Back to lunch, too, if you weren't done eating."

"Worry about yourself, now, why don't you? And don't you worry about these right this instant." Miss Ophélie gently touched the leather folio Willow was carrying. "You'll get to them when you get to them. Whenever it is that you're ready."

"Any day, then, yes?"

"Any week. It's fine."

"And if it isn't?"

"Then return them to sender. I'll send them around. Take a load off. Lord knows you've been taking your share long enough."

Willow's knitted brow began to relax under a knowing look from Miss Ophélie that she clearly knew quite well herself. She had a good long peek into the folio, taking stock of the sheaf inside.

"Maybe I will. Maybe even some right this instant." Willow passed back a short stack of handwritten papers with some relief at giving in to such insistence. "This is my vacation, too, yes?"

Miss Ophélie reflected Tequila's smile, not needing to ask who no longer had to remind her.


End file.
